For various systems including enterprises and service providers, effective communication between the different systems is important to ensure that appropriate data is being passed between the systems. Many systems provide an interface or other means for interacting with data of the system, such as via an application programming interface (API). These systems are termed “providing” or “provider” systems, which receive requests from “requesting” or “requestor” systems. The API request and API response are types of API messages that may be sent according to the API. In particular, requesting systems can provide requests, such as API requests, that are processed by the providing system and responded to with an API response. However, effective use of these interfaces, particularly between different systems, developers, or applications is hampered by several obstacles.
As one example, providing systems may continue to operate an interface that is outdated or uses messaging structures that do not readily permit context or additional interpretation of content for the message. A requesting system may not be able to readily identify the proper API request type or parameters to use in a request, and the data received in a response may be difficult to accurately interpret due to the lack of contextual or semantic information in the API message. Therefore, the requesting system (or its designer) receiving the API message may have to dedicate significant resources in correctly using the API and interpreting the API response.
As another example, requests originating from requesting systems can be error prone. For example, the configuration of the requesting system is often conducted in isolation by developers who personally interpret the documentation provided for the API. However, developer interpretations can be incorrect and therefore, the API request provided by a requesting system can be incorrect. This leads to downstream processing problems as a providing system analyzes and responds to the incorrect API request. In addition, API requests may be correctly formatted and therefore produce a response by the providing system, but may provide data for the response that is unexpected by the designer of the requesting system in ways that may not be readily identifiable. For example, a response to a database query may designate information of a type expected by the requesting system, but include different or unexpected results than suggested by the API or its documentation.
Additionally, in scenarios where the API request accurately captures the intention of a developer, each providing system can incorrectly respond to an API request. Conventionally, each providing system implements its own response parsing and actuation system to process an API request. This process results in excessive consumption of resources such as wasted time, computational resources, and manpower.